LAST week’s paper contained a number of articles which referred to uncertainty about the future of North Yorkshire within the devolution debate (DST, Sept 4).

I agree with the leader of North Yorkshire County Council, Carl Les, that it is a complex issue, but to say that the delay in forming a structured bid by the deadline of September 4 was due to the attitude of those involved and to holidays paints a rather bleak future for the changing political landscape.

In response to your articles, I would make two points.

Firstly, county and district councillors have known about the devolution argument for some time now.

In January, a report was presented to the county council by the York, North Yorkshire and East Riding LEP (whose framework Cllr Les proposes as the way forward). The recommendation in the report was that county and district councillors formed a joint committee to consider the benefit of a combined authority. This in turn would help support a bid from North Yorkshire as it presented a cohesive partnership for the region which Westminster was encouraging.

Given that Cllr Les, and his predecessor Cllr John Weighell, as leader of the county council and representatives of all district councils are members of the LEP board making the proposal, the outcome would seem a foregone conclusion.

However, I do not know whether county and district councils took this recommendation on board. This may be part of the “attitude of those involved”, referred to by Cllr Les.

Either way, I suspect that the prospect of a combined authority looming over the horizon will not be greeted with open arms by many councillors and officers, who would prefer the way left open for a hazy re-shuffle which would essentially mean business as usual.

My second point is for your columnist, Joe Willis, who expressed concern about the lack of public involvement in “the big decisions”.

Most of the public do not engage in the strategic dealings of local authorities. The lack of public involvement referred to by Joe is hardly surprising and this isn’t purely the fault of local authorities who are generally quite transparent in their dealings to anyone who has an interest.

Most people rely on the media to take, condense and present perhaps complex issues in a digestible format and this usually happens when there are elements of controversy. In the case of devolution, this pops up in the D and S Times when D-Day arrives although the background and potential big story has always been in the council reports, freely available to the public and the press on council web sites.

Perhaps a (highlights of this week’s local council meetings) column in the D and S Times might avoid surprises, may encourage engagement and may even focus local councils when a big decision isn’t being made.

B Forbes, Thornton le Moor